Playing catch-up with some of the holiday’s stealth game releases

Check out five smaller games you might have missed over the holiday season.

In the gaming world, "when it's done" has been the rebellious release-date choice favored by the industry's coolest coders. Forget quarterly reports and optimal schedules! Just ship the thing! Then the holidays come along, and everyone's trying to keep up with year-end lists and holiday game sales, when suddenly a bunch of indie knock-outs materialize with surprise releases. With new consoles and big-name games launching, these games get lost in the mix.

Well, we made some time and checked out a few of the lesser-hyped releases that snuck in just under the wire for 2013 (we’ll be covering the early-access release of DayZ in the coming days as well). Here's a taste of some December debuts that video game fans might've missed.

Risk of Rain

Game Details

What is it?: A side-scrolling run-and-gun with modern indie twists. Imagine an even more pixellated version of Contra with protagonists so tiny that screen-filling bosses feel extra massive in comparison. Choose from ten soldier classes, each with individual stats and four special attacks, (much like League of Legends or, to be super-specific, Awesomenauts), and battle on semi-random levels full of loot (much like Spelunky).

RoR’s twist comes with its timer, which sees enemies growing in power and intensity every few minutes. Sure, you could comb through a level for every single bit of treasure, giving your soldier all of the bonuses necessary to survive later levels, but if you lose track of your loot-to-clock ratio, those bonuses won’t amount to squat.

Why you might have missed it: No pre-release buzz or festival entries for this one other than a quiet Greenlight campaign earlier in the year. 2013 was the year roguelikes broke, as well, so it was easy to lump this one in with every other lo-fi entry in the genre. That was a mistake.

Should you get it?: If you like action games, absolutely. RoR’s timer is a cool gimmick, but the mix of classes really makes the game stand out. Each class is packed with distinct, interesting perks, like the slow Enforcer’s ability to block all damage from one side (while weakening the other) and the swift Engineer’s dash-and-blast tactics, which kick up damage while pulling off evasive maneuvers. Since you’ll be replaying this incredibly tough game a lot, it’s nice to enjoy different bits of nuance in every blast-a-thon, along with a ton of varied bonuses to unlock.

The game’s only drawback, really, is the antiquated matchmaking for its superb co-op mode. Until this portion is patched for friends-list ease, get ready to exchange many IP addresses.

Samurai Gunn

Game Details

What is it?: A retro-styled arena fighting game, Samurai Gunn sets four people against each other in tiny, claustrophobic arenas to jump around and clamor for position Mario-style. Not only does that description sound a lot like TowerFall, one of our picks for 2013, but the two games also look incredibly similar.

Samurai Gunn’s unique appeal comes down to the subtler differences. Namely, SG fighters are primarily equipped with little swords, as opposed to bows and arrows, and its arenas lack the power-ups of TowerFall. It's the purer option for twitchy players looking to scratch an 8-bit deathmatch itch, and it's wired to deliver a ton of satisfying "I got you first" kill moments.

Why you might have missed it: Shoppers were miffed that Samurai Gunn launched without online support—a deliberate design decision, considering the quick responses needed to settle SG's sword-and-gun combat. Don't bother if you don't have a PC hooked up to your living room TV.

Should you get it?: Maybe. On the plus side, SG is ready to roll on PCs, whereas TowerFall's current Ouya exclusivity and reliance on Ouya's awful Bluetooth adapter for controllers can't end soon enough (that game's port to PC and PlayStation is coming early in 2014). Also, SG's swordplay, spiced up with a low-ammo handgun, is tuned for incredible tension and couch-shouting glee, so if you already have a bunch of gamepads connected to a PC, and you're jones for Smash Bros.-styled games, this one's a no-brainer.

However, the game's sloppiest elements, like buggy team-forming options and the inability to pause mid-game, have yet to receive a patch. The game’s zillions of battle arenas, some of which at least have welcome oddities like reverse gravity and sticky platforms, can also be a pain to parse. Currently, they're more of a hodgepodge of 8-bit rooms than a finely tuned roster of death. If the designers don't sneak in with a layer of polish before TowerFall Ascension's launch in a few months, then SG will fall by the wayside.

Peggle 2

Game Details

What is it?: More Peggle. As in, more of the puzzle game where you launch little pinballs at a giant grid of pegs, vaguely resembling The Price is Right's popular Plinko challenge, hoping for perfectly angled shots and bounces to clear the grid.

That basic conceit sees pretty much no change in the sequel, so it's all about the window dressing. For starters, Peggle 2 introduces a giant slew of "challenge" levels, which force players to fulfill certain conditions ("have no pinballs left at the end of a level," etc.). Each normal level comes with three optional objectives to strive for, as well.

Beyond that, the new "masters" are the big change, with only one holdover from the prior game. Some of the newbies have boring Peggle superpowers, like "Jeff," an annoyingly obvious ode to The Big Lebowski, who destroys entire columns of the playfield with a giant boulder. Some are intriguing, like Luna, who blanks out the non-essential blue pegs so that pinballs can shoot right through them—and, importantly, rack up points for the ghost-hits. Frosty's power actually freezes and pushes pegs, creating a shuffleboard-esque effect when pegs slide and collide with each other. It's easy to imagine an entirely new Peggle that revolves around Frosty’s power, but PopCap didn't capitalize on such an idea.

Why you might have missed it: For the moment, Peggle 2 is an Xbox One exclusive, which is a curious choice. Not only does the game lack visual flourish and Xbox One-specific features (unless you count the game automatically recording clips of high-scoring shots), but it runs pretty terribly, with lots of slowdown and jitters. Peggle 2 has the hand-drawn polish you'd expect from a PopCap game, but a game that has obviously been designed to run on things like smartphones should not choke on Microsoft's new eight-core machine.

Should you get it?: Depends on how much PopCap updates the game over time. The game currently feels incredibly thin with only five masters, but the menu screens have a lot of white space; hopefully we'll see many more masters and enough extra levels to match. (A "duels" multiplayer mode has been announced, at least, but no date has been set yet.) For now, Peggle 2 is just as fun to play as the original, with enough challenge breadcrumbs to entice mega-fans, but it has yet to earn its $15 pricetag.

The Novelist

Game Details

What is it?: A first-person, story-driven game in which you, a ghost, float through a summer rental house and spy on a family of three. Oh, and everyone's bummed out: Dad is dealing with writer's block while trying to write a novel; Mom feels listless and isolated while trying to support her husband; Tommy doesn't have enough friends or attention from his parents.

If you're looking for a comparison point, The Novelist actually plays quite differently than this year's spectacular Gone Home. Instead of a linear story that plays out through a giant house, The Novelist traps players in a much smaller house where they must "hunt" for clues (a letter, a drawing, a page from the novel) and then decide which family members will get what they want at each chapter's end. At least one person will be bummed out, and the following chapters reflect those earlier choices. On paper, then, this is a more interactive take on story-gaming than what the likes of Gone Home or Dear Esther offer.

Why you might have missed it: Because its plot revolves around family disappointments and happened to see release right before Christmas. As if holiday stress wasn't enough!

Should you get it?: Probably not. For starters, the "ghost" mechanics are dissatisfying in both of the game's modes. In stealth mode, you are asked to hide from the family, so you warp around the room until you get behind a person and read their memories (or else you scare them, and their hopes don't come true). This ends up adding a lot of unnecessary annoyance. But when you remove that restriction in story mode, where you can freely wander around the house, it reveals just how sluggish and annoying the game's "wander to reveal" mechanic really is. Nothing about the first-person house wandering—its art, its voice acting, its details—feels preferable to converting the entire plot to a book, or even text-only interactive fiction.

Between the solid-at-best writing and a personality-free child character who serves merely as a foil for the adults, it's hard to fall for the story, no matter how many times you play through and change up who gets disappointed, and when.

What is it: A console port of this year's Windows 8-exclusive twin-stick Halo shooter, Spartan Assault originally shipped as a touch-screen blast-'em-up and added some nice Halo tweaks, like weaponry and vehicles, to the top-down gunning genre. That version eventually received controller support, so that's not new in this port. Online co-op is the only identifiable addition, in fact, and while that's welcome, this game isn't about to topple other high-octane offerings in the genre, particularly 2012's fantastic Renegade Ops.

Why you might have missed it: Because the game's launch on Xbox 360 won't come until next year, even though the game's low-detail, top-down aesthetic hopefully won't give the older console much trouble.

Should you get it?: Not until Microsoft patches the microtransactions. The higher-level challenges just about demand that players equip better weapons and power-ups, which can be purchased with experience points or real cash. And the game has obviously been tuned to annoy players into coughing up cash to progress, as experience points are pretty slow to accumulate. This, in a game that already costs $15, from the company that just ate crow for doing the same thing to Forza Motorsport 5 players? Get your act together, Microsoft.